Geoffrey Bennington’s Lecture on Derrida and Deconstruction

Back when I first started reading Derrida, one of my mentors who got me into French philosophy recommended Geoffrey Bennington‘s works. At the time, Bennington was one of her PhD advisers at the European Graduate School—along with Alain Badiou and Catherine Malabou. To be honest, I didn’t know who any of these people were, but now I’m just like, “Dang!”. Since I always try to avoid secondary sources, I was reluctant on reading Bennington until last month. This was when I discovered for myself that Bennington is the most renown Derridean expert in the world. In my opinion, Bennington is the go-to secondary source for Derrida.

In the future, I may write about Bennington on Kant in relationship with politics and the state of nature. It appears that the “necessity of contingency” has become a very popular idea in contemporary continental philosophy. In Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth (2017), Bennington appears to have similar thoughts to Quentin Meillassoux. Only that Bennington does not reject Kant like Meillassoux does through the criticism of correlationism. Instead, Bennington follows Kant’s ideas between speculative and practical reason to bring out the antinomy of judgement and the “frontier” on the necessity of contingency. It is this necessity of the necessity of contingency of nature which allows humans to develop the “laws of nature” via interpreting nature. Freedom is the perfect example of this, since the moment one conceptualizes it through the contingency of nature, freedom becomes threatened through its own conceptual boundaries. To conceive of “actual” freedom, as opposed to “possible” freedom, is to think of the necessary contingency (i.e. possibility) of the end and the disappearance of freedom as a representation of freedom. To be fair, the theme on contingency—especially through mathematics—has been around for quite some time. Alain Badiou was one of the first to situate it as an ontology (the study of being). Badiou was heavily influenced by a famous 19th century French poet named Stéphane Mallarmé and his poem, “A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance” (many 20th century French philosophers were influenced by him); he was also influenced by the way Lacan used mathematics in psychoanalysis, and Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave.

Nonetheless, Bennington’s lecture stayed very close to Of Grammatology. He explained Derrida better than I did, which is not surprising. Bennington jumped over a few discourses, such as Husserl and Heidegger where I would have elaborated more on (I mentioned some of their relationships in my post on Stephen Hicks). For example, Bennington made a leap from the relationship between signifiers all the way to trace. While this is the correct move, Bennington leaves out the problem of temporality, which is revealed near the end of the talk with his bogus animation of letters appearing in the white space of the slide. Clearly, Bennington was trying to hint at Derrida’s famous concept called “Spacing”—something that I have addressed in my own readings of Derrida.

His Q&A at the end is also very useful. I like the way he highlights some of the disagreements between psychoanalysts and deconstructors. One of their differences revolves around how Lacan’s psychoanalytical claims are, for Derrida, not completely psychoanalytical. For example, Lacan would sometimes confuse the philosophical transcendental object as the psychoanalytical Objet petit a (object cause of desire). Yet, Bennington ends his answer by remarking on how the circumstances of our world requires psychoanalysts and deconstructors to be friends—something that I agree on. With this being said, I am enrolled in my first graduate class this spring on deconstruction and psychoanalysis which I am very excited about.

If you have read through the entire Of Grammatology, then you should be proud of yourself because it is quite difficult (I heard it is easier in original French). I knew people who threw in the towel within the first 30 pages. Of Grammatology is split into two parts. The difficulty of Part I, which is the first 100 pages in Spivak’s 1997 translation, is comparable to other really difficult texts such as Hegelian dialectics and Lacanian psychoanalysis. If you understand Part I, then Part II, which is the remaining 200-300 pages, gradually gets easier. Part II resembles Derrida’s early thoughts on deconstruction in relationship with politics. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl are the key philosophers for understanding Derrida.

Just like other major works by most philosophers, Of Grammatology requires more than one read. I have read it so many times that some of its pages are falling out. Even though I still occasionally read this book and learn something new every time, it is no longer on my active reading list because I am constantly occupied with other books (I am going to school, working, and doing my own research at the same time). If my posts on Derrida has assisted you on your readings on Of Grammatology or further understandings of Derrida, then you have made my day. If you enjoy Derrida, I would suggest you to try reading French novelist / critic, Maurice Blanchot—especially his books, The Space of Literature, and The Step Not Beyond.